One of my earliest editorials took to task the NY Times film critic A. O. Scott for a review of Art School Confidential that I found to be banal, pointless and infuriatingly uninformative—while at the same time basically retelling the plot. I promised then that I’d review the movie after I’d seen it. Saw it yesterday, so here goes. Feel free to tell me this is banal, pointless or anything else you think fits. I can dish it out, I take it.—Dimmer.

To review a movie based on a book, should the reviewer be expected to know the book as well as the movie, or should the focus simply be on the film work as presented? Art School Confidential (ASC) is based upon a six-pager written by Daniel Clowes for his comic Eightball. The story was frank, funny and simple: art school is more-or-less pointless, the only thing worse than the students is the professors; art criticism and the value of art is decided upon by people who perhaps are not as worthy or knowledgeable as they’d like to think.

Clowes is one of a group of current comic book writers and artists who have a rosy tinted view of 1950’s culture—easy enough now to ignore the issues of the time and focus on it’s more beautific facets, it is still a romanticized view of a past …

MORE...